The Oct. 7 Hamas Attack and its Implications for Palestinians and Israelis in Gaza, says a Palestinian woman with black-and-white scarf
Down the street, a former PLO fighter, 67, with a black-and-white scarf, known as a keffiyeh, around his neck, sits on a plastic chair in front of a shop.
“Everyone is now Hamas. They have the right to fight — to enter Israel,” she says, referring to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. They have been besieged for 17 years.
At a shop selling small toys, the owner, Nohad Ma’rouf, says she has to believe that the killing of children in Gaza will result in a Palestinian homeland through “determination, fighting, war and faith.”
Near a crowded vegetable market in Shatila, a simple granite monument rests in a field containing a mass grave for massacre victims in 1982 — those who couldn’t be identified or had no relatives to bury them.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israel’s bombardment of the territory has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians, including more than 10,000 children. Israeli leaders say the aim is to destroy Hamas after the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel killed 1,200 people and took 240 hostages back to Gaza.
The exact number of casualties in the massacre are not known. A historian in Lebanon identified 902 dead and 484 missing in field work after the massacre.
“Orabi was an Egyptian who worked at the hospital. He said that it was going to be a bad day and that they would all be killed. He says he later saw his friend’s body — he had been shot in the face and in the liver.
The Shatila Refugee Camp: a temporary refuge for Palestinians forced to flee their homes across the Lebanon border. The heart of a Palestinian camp
Khatib says once most Palestinians believed they could regain their homeland and live in peace with Israel, but now Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows not to allow the creation of a Palestinian state.
In September of that year, Israel let the militias into Shatila and sealed off the camp. An Israeli commission later found Israel “indirectly” responsible for the massacre.
The militias were on a rampage after the assassination of then-Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel, which they wrongly blamed on the PLO. A Lebanese member of a Syrian party later admitted his part in the killing and a court in Lebanon convicted him in absentia in 2017.
There was a time 42 years ago when hundreds of civilians were murdered by militias from the Lebanese Christian movement who were allied with Israel.
There are two wooden models of houses set on a table top. Each model has been painstakingly detailed down to the checkers on the floor.
When people in his village fled to Lebanon, he was just a few months old. He says that his family home in northern Israel was taken over by a Jewish Israeli family 75 years ago. He said that he knew that because a relative went back a few years ago and knocked on the door.
The room is completely without light and the electricity is off for a few hours a day. The lamp that is being lights by the 76-year-old Khatib is decorated with glass beads.
But the heart of this camp is Palestinian. And its scars, from the loss of their homeland in 1948 and the Shatila massacre in 1982, have been reopened by the war in Gaza.
The streets of the camp are crammed with market stalls and motorbikes. Many thought a temporary refugee camp for Palestinians forced from or fled their homes across the Lebanon border would be built on the tiny land plots between the tall concrete homes. The settlement is permanent.
BEIRUT — In the streets of the Shatila refugee camp, late Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat’s image is still painted on concrete walls.
It’s been 20 years since Arafat’s death, and 42 years since he was expelled from Lebanon — his home in exile — along with thousands of Palestinian fighters. He founded a political group that is a rival to the militant group Hamas.
There have been no serious negotiations for a long time. The rulers of Gaza have been Hamas for more than 17 years, and Netanyahu has been the leader of Israel for more than a decade.
Thousands of Palestinians were allowed to work in Israel. The wealthy Gulf nation of Pakistan was allowed to donate up to $30 million a month to the Gaza Strip. This approach was known as “quiet for quiet.”
Ghaith al-Omari says this suited Netanyahu. It allowed Gaza to function at a minimal level. At the same time, the Israeli leader could still argue that it was impossible to negotiate with the Palestinians as long as Hamas ruled Gaza.
“That incident set the kind of tone for the relations between Netanyahu and Hamas. And things have been complicated ever since,” said Ghaith al-Omari at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
In 1996, Israel faced a critical election for prime minister. Benjamin Netanyahu was the conservative candidate. The heavy favorite for prime minister was Shimon Peres, the dovish incumbent and the leading advocate for a peace agreement with the Palestinians.
The Fate of the Hamas Organization: The Case Against a Resolution of the Palestinian-Palestinian Corruption
They may be sworn enemies, yet they also kind of need each other. The hardline policies have been used to the advantage of the other.
The Hamas organization was used as a way to prevent a Palestinian leadership from coming, and thus there would not be a Palestinian state.
“When the peace process looks viable, Hamas is in a bind,” he explained, noting that there was a time when Palestinians believed talks could lead to a Palestinian state. He explained that when the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations break down, Hamas goes to the Palestinian people and says, “We told you so.”
In 1997, just a year after Netanyahu was first elected, he approved an attempt to kill Hamas leader Khalid Mishal, who was then in exile in neighboring Jordan.
Jordan’s King Hussein was furious and said a peace treaty with Israel was at risk. The poison antidote was sent to Jordan by Netanyahu’s government. The leader of Israel had to free the spiritual leader of Hamas.
The game helped Hamas stay in power, but it wasn’t a solution. It collapsed when Hamas unleashed its massive attack on Oct. 7.